Feeling-Fat Days

In my opinion, bad-hair days don't hold a candle to feeling-fat days. You open your eyes in the morning and feel sick to your stomach. Then you remember last night's dinner: fried onion rings, pizza with pepperoni and four kinds of cheese, and bread pudding with orange sauce for dessert. (Was there anything green on your plate? You can't recall.)

You sit up and gaze at your middle. A groundswell of flesh is drifting toward the fluffy area that used to be your stomach. You haul your legs out of bed, and as you waddle to the bathroom, your thighs rub together. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Bad mistake. Your eyes are swollen, your wrinkles have procreated during the night, and your skin is lackluster from a lifetime of not drinking eight glasses of water a day. Only five minutes have passed since you woke up, and you are already wondering if it's time to go back to bed.

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On bad-hair days you can wear a hat, but because body bags are not an option, on feeling-fat days you have to find an alternative way to put yourself together. After living through many of these days, I've come up with a few tricks that I'd like to pass on to you. They might sound a bit trite, given the gravity of expanding flesh and thighs that seem to have taken on a life of their own, but trust me, they work.[pagebreak]

Red Does Wonders Have you ever noticed that certain colors make you feel a certain way? Green, for instance, can calm you down. Yellow can lift your spirits and bring a shot of joy into your heart. And red can work magic because it is the color of courage, strength, and power. And believe me, when you are having one of those fat days, a little courage helps a lot.

Only yesterday I was feeling grumpy, pudgy, and tired. I took off the beige shirt I was wearing and slipped on a red blouse instead. Just looking at it made me feel more alive. It wasn't an instant cure, but it did remind me that strength and power are qualities I already possess, qualities so near that I wear them literally on my sleeve.

My mother says red is a happy color. Red also evokes bravery and the ability to separate from what's keeping you stuck, which is important to do on a feeling-fat day. The truth is, feeling fat has less to do with last night's bread pudding than it does with your old beliefs about the connection between fat and self-worth, and between the size of your body and what you feel you are allowed to do or say or be.

Wearing red supports the idea that your past does not rule your life. It is a message to your psyche that says, "Though I ate bread pudding last night, and my stomach is awash with ripples today, I am still allowed to be strong and powerful. I am still allowed to be loved and love myself. So pipe down."If you've avoided everything red because you are convinced that wearing this color makes you look terminally ill, the word on the street is that with the proper shade of red, anyone's skin will glow. Consider magenta, burgundy, fuchsia, or ruby. Or try shades that sound like romance novels: cherries in the snow, forever berry, or russet moon. But if you are steadfast in your anti-red stance, or if you need to wear sober uniforms to work, remember that you can adorn your toes, nails, and lips with red. As those who have spent years in retail therapy know, the operative word is accessorize, accessorize, accessorize.[pagebreak]

Belts And Reality Checks I realize that on feeling-fat days, you want to hide. You wish you could call in sick to work or cancel a lunch date with a friend. If you venture outdoors, you will probably be wearing a muumuu-like article of clothing that you believe hides last night's eating escapades. But in my experience, the best thing to wear on a day like this is a belt. A belt reminds you that you have a body and that it actually has a shape.

After working with tens of thousands of women in my workshops, I've come to understand that most women have no idea what size their body truly is. Ask a friend to demonstrate how big her stomach is, and she will extend her arms two feet past her abdomen. Ask a group of women to describe the size of their thighs, and they will draw a verbal picture of hulking mounds with no resemblance to physical anatomy. We are hopelessly out of touch with reality when it comes to body size.

My friend Maria called me today. She told me that after getting some terrible news about her job, she went straight for the cookies, and after that, the ice cream, and after that, the cake. She started talking about her stomach and how she was sure that none of her clothes would fit her today. I gave her my standard feeling-fat advice. Wear a belt, I said. She asked me if I'd lost my mind. "My stomach is walking in front of me when I walk down the hall," she said. "How can I wear a belt?" I told her to get one of those cinch belts, the kind with elastic in them.

A few hours later, she called to say that she had on a red belt with a wooden buckle. "I have a waist!" she shouted. "I guess it didn't disappear after all." Reminding herself that she has a waist and that her feelings about her body size are different than her actual size allowed Maria to step out of her misery and come back to reality. (And because she felt so much better about herself, she was less likely to turn to food again for comfort.)

Wearing a belt is a simple, concrete way of physically defining yourself. It allows you to circumscribe your body, to touch its boundary line. Despite what you ate last night, despite how fat you may be feeling at the moment, wearing a belt offers a reality check. It gives you a chance to distinguish between your ideas about how big you are and your actual body size. It serves to remind you that you and a small cottage are not the same size. And that is a good thing.